No, *you’re* fired: Football Chairman for iOS is your new time-waster

For years you’ve suffered the indignity of playing Football Manager: kow-towing before the board, begging them for a few more morsels from their table for your transfer budget, living in fear of the moment that they grow tired of you. Well stand up, friends. No more obsequious bowing and scraping for you. I have discovered Football Chairman.

Football Chairman is strictly a waiting-at-the-bus-stop time-waster — the gameplay is only an inch deep and it’s not even trying to compete with Football Manager for iOS in terms of complexity — but it’s a very good time-waster indeed, and it’s free to boot.

This game is a lovely little megalomania sim. You are the chairman of a lower-league English football club and your task is to get them to the top flight by being an insufferable millstone around the neck of your managers: Approve (or disapprove!) every single transfer and player contract. Hire and fire managers according to your whimsy. You have control over stadium expansions and training budgets and the game keeps a fairly robust set of statistics for your team.

It’s really a enjoyable game and you can’t beat the pricing model: it’s free (and perfectly playable as such) but if you want to reward developers Underground Creative for their hard work, you can kick in a buck or two for a one-time cash injection into your club’s coffers.